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HUNTING THE HOWLER
Monkey-Shooting in the Forests of British Guiana
By P. GRISWOLD HOWES
T H E R E is one voice of the
South American jungle that
is terrible to even the experi­
enced woodsman. It is the
raucous, shuddering wail—
the cry of the banshee, the squalling
laugh of the hyena and the shriek of the
screech owl combined and magnified—
of the bull howling monkey as he calls
his triumph and defiance through the
echoing forest aisles. You may hear it
a thousand times, but the thousandth time
you start just as nervously
as the first, the same shiver
ripples up your spine, and
you raise your rifle involuntarily.
You are in no personal
danger, of course, but your
nervous system refuses to
remember it.
In April Hartley and I
started our hunt. We found
the monkeys feeding on the
sweet pulp of a fruit • we
named the "vermilion nut".
They were in the very highest
branches, from one hundred
to one hundred fifty
feet above the ground in
the tallest part of the surrounding
jungle.
There were several ways
of locating the troupes. If
we heard them howling it
was an easy matter to work
gradually beneath them,
using the compass to find
our way out to the trail
again. At other times we
located them by watching fruit-bearing
trees, especially the vermilion nut tree,
for wdiich they hail a particular passion.
The odor of howders is very distinct
and powerful. We could smell them a
long way off and often ran down bands
of them in this way.
They sleep a great deal in the tree
tops, completely hidden from below.
Twice we sat down in the silent forest,
believing the trees to be feeding grounds
to which the monkeys would return
eventually. We waited for hours, scanning
every possible bower among the
foliage, without results. Hartley suggested
shooting off a gun. On the instant
of the discharge, howlers, big and
'KOTOS 8' MOWIS
Head of an Old Bull Howler
This male, the leader of a band numbering
sixty or more, weighed fortyeight
pounds.
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